1. Oh good, the new school year doesn't start for another three months and I'm already in "I am a failure compared to other people I know" mode. (I'm not planning to move until early/mid August -- the term starts late August -- and several people I know who are also starting grad school moved to their new cities this past week. I am reminding myself there's no reason to be there that far in advance when I know I won't be doing anything productive, and I'll just be paying rent and making my own food two months early.)

2. I do, I think, have a place in Atlanta, with a friend of a friend who was looking for a new roommate. We've been e-mailing for a few months and had a video chat last week, and she seems nice and this should work out. I do keep worrying about furniture and stuff, but she said I could send things there so I might end up buying furniture online and shipping it there in advance of my arrival.

2a. I still have not made, like, concrete plans on how to get my belongings from point A to point B. I should...do that...eventually...I guess.

3. I feel terrible about the fact that my personal crisis and breakup coincided with, you know, the American political crisis, and they definitely fed off each other in ways that I don't really want to examine too closely -- I mean, my reactions to both did, I guess, obviously my personal life was not affecting American politics. But it definitely affected the way I reacted to it, and the emotional and mental energy I had (have) to deal with it. I don't know, there's not really a point to this.

4. I've been fighting a lot with my father lately, and it's exhausting and demeaning and awful. And it's not even fighting, per se, or maybe it is -- like, the other day he came up to my room because we're having an internet problem and he wanted to see how my connection is, then stayed in my room looking around at my art and figurine displays after I asked him to please get out of my room. "No, I want to see your things." "This is making me uncomfortable." (At this point he's walking around my room; also, I feel like I should add that I have a fair number of Star Wars pinups in my room, so like, my father looking at sexy ladies? V. uncomfortable.) "Why? I want to look at your little things. Obviously you want them to be looked or you wouldn't have put them up, don't be so sensitive." "They're here because I want to look at them and this is making me uncomfortable." "Don't be so sensitive or get out of my house." Etc.

And then yesterday I made a comment about having already done my exercise for the day and my dad said, "What, did you walk downstairs and then up again?" and I, well, overreacted and said, "This is why I don't do anything when you or mom are at home, because you always make fun of me!" "No one is making fun of you, don't be so sensitive." "You literally just did!" "I just made a comment, don't be so sensitive." And then I went upstairs and cried and tried to figure out if I really had overreacted.

So that's been happening a lot lately.

5. I am moving to Atlanta in August, so I'm trying to decide if I want to go to Dragon*Con or not. I've never go to a con besides Star Wars Celebration, and I'm not sue if I actually know anyone who's already going or not, so... *hands* Also, I can't figure out from the website if I can go for just one day or if I have to pay for the whole weekend? I am probably missing something obvious.

1. I've been incredibly tired the past few days (I want to say today is day 5 of Exhausted All The Time, Literally, All The Time, but it might be more), which might be due to my period, to the fact my mother's been gone and I've been doing all the household stuff since I got back from NOLA, to the probably-depression, to the definitely-anxiety and stress, to diet/exercise/etc. I don't know, it's just really annoying at this point, and I should figure out a way to change it.

2. My mother came back from Japan yesterday, so at least I don't have to do all the household stuff anymore. On the other hand, my stress level has now rocketed, because she's very...much a go-getter, I guess, unlike me or my dad. And it gets frustrating for me because she doesn't really give off the impression that she thinks I'm competent at anything, especially academic bureaucracy nonsense.

2a. Unless it's her academic bureaucracy nonsense, because guess who did literally all the paperwork so that she could get hired at CWU to teach Japanese this fall. LITERALLY ALL OF IT. She started swearing up and down that she wouldn't take the job (it was offered but she still had to do all the paperwork to apply) because she didn't want to do the paperwork, she wanted someone else to do it for her, and because it was all on the computer my father wouldn't do it, so I did it. (It was easy, by the way. A lot easier than applying to six graduate schools.)

3. I'm starting to get really stressed about moving to Atlanta in August -- I'm in talks with a potential roommate, but that's going slowly mostly because I hate answering e-mail and put it off for a few days every time, and I'm pretty sure that's making me come off as a complete flake. So nothing's certain on that point yet.

3a. I also looked at some of the apartment complexes listed in the "Welcome to Emory" booklet, because on the one hand I'd rather live alone, on the other it's obviously a lot more expensive. Plus I don't know where anything is, so trying to figure out where they are in relation to the Emory shuttle line (I don't have a car) is really difficult.

3b. I still have no idea how I am going to get my things to Atlanta. Driving a U-haul is pretty much out of the question, because (a) I've haven't driven on a highway since driver's ed in 2006, (b) I've never driven outside my small hometown, (c) I've never driven for more than about twenty minutes at a time (and I'm not even sure about that, see again, small town), and (d) my parents won't do it, either. I'm reminding myself that worst-case scenario, I leave most of my stuff here, box up some clothes and books to ship, take two suitcases, and buy everything else in Atlanta. I would rather not do that because I'm very attached to all my belongings and I've got a full complement of household stuff that I'd hate to have to re-buy, but it is also probably the most practical thing, since even re-buying everything is probably cheaper than transporting it cross-country. (I mean, my massive collection of Star Wars art is coming with me; I'd rather not buy another couple dozen frames since I just got most things framed, but... *hands*)

3c. I had a full-blown anxiety attack the other night about furniture. CHRIST, BEDLAM, IT'S FINE, THEY SELL FURNITURE IN ATLANTA, you'll probably be in a hotel the first couple days anyway. I haven't had an anxiety attack in a while (for me it feels different than a panic attack? and I'm not sure, like, an actual psychiatrist would class either that way, but whatever, it works in my head), but as usual it took me a while to figure out what was happening and once I did I was able to talk myself down. But it was scary because I haven't had that for a while because I've been busy crying over my ex and hating everything for the past six months; totally different kind of nervous breakdown.

4. At this point I'm just irritated with myself for still being fucked up over my ex. It's been six months, I should be over myself by now, she probably is.

4a. I offhandedly referred to my ex (with female pronouns) during dinner in a conversation about international shipping rates, my dad went bugeyed, and my mother almost fell over herself explaining that it was my ex-FRIEND, not a BOYfriend. And that's why I've determined not to actually come out to my parents unless I actually have a significant other, which frankly seems unlikely to ever occur. (Hilariously enough, I've tried in that subtle "I could get married to a woman now!" sort of way; they just don't register it. The only person who's ever registered it is my aunt.)

5. Finally set up my Emory account, which was a hassle because apparently I already had an Emory account from 2008 (I applied and got in, but didn't attend), so I had to call them, which, (a) I hate phone calls, and (b) there's a three hour time difference that I kept barely missing. And then, well -- Emory's online systems are, uh, kind of a mess? They've got some kind of dual authentication going on which requires the app to CALL ME (or message me, whatever) on my phone in order to log in on my computer WHOSE BRIGHT IDEA WAS THAT christ jesus.

5a. *hollow laughter* Apparently I have to take a language exam in August so I am frantically trying to brush up on the Latin I haven't touched in a year, though I should probably e-mail the profs to make sure Latin is acceptable. (I mean, I assume it is, I have to be competent in four languages and Latin's the only one I'm remotely comfortable with. My Greek and French are both Bad, and I don't have a fourth right now. It'll probably be German, ultimately (I took it in high school), though I think I'd rather do Italian since it's another Romance language. German's probably more useful, though, and I think more German scholars do my field.)

5b. Boy, it sure would be great if my father didn't constantly badmouth my academic specialty (imperialism and colonialism; I obviously deal primarily with both in the context of Rome) without seeming to realize he's doing so until I point it out. Both in the general context of their existence, and in a "lol academic theory, silly academics" sort of way, despite the fact that he's the one who told me I could never do anything but academia so I don't know why he's surprised that I am, in fact, an academic.

5c. My father is a hardline (though non-religious) Republican who keeps trying to tell me that I will "grow out" of being a Democrat, so being in this house is a constant tightrope of not trying to say anything remotely related to politics or current events, ever. (Neither of my parents has ever really registered that I actually am religious, just not in an easily identifiable manner.)

1. I was in New Orleans Wednesday-Monday for my graduation -- technically I'm August 2016, but that means I get to go to the May 2017 commencement ceremonies, or at least that's what I got all the information for. Except not all the information, because I don't think they actually like...knew I was going to be there, since I wasn't listed in the program. So I probably should have figured that out first, but I'd expected that the graduation people would contact me if they needed my information. Apparently this is a problem for people who officially graduated in summer or winter and not in May, though.

1a. Graduations are a big deal to me -- academia can be so cerebral and so lonely and so internally focused, without a whole lot to show for it (especially in the liberal arts, where if you're lucky all you get are reams of paper and more likely you just have digital files and a lot of trauma), and having that kind of celebration and acknowledgment always feels huge to me. Especially because last year was such a horrific disaster, so being able to come back and be calm about it and not having to MOVE the next day (which happened at my undergrad commencement) was wonderful.

1b. The commencement speaker this year was Helen Mirren, and she was great.

1c. I got to see a lot of the classics professors I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to last summer (see again, horrific disaster), and that was great.

2. My mother found out about my tattoos, because I had a wardrobe malfunction after the hooding ceremony and the back of my dress slipped. She is...not happy. Actually, she went "how could you do something so against my culture?" which was not the reaction I was expecting because it literally never occurred to me?

2a. This was the day before commencement, and Helen Mirren actually ended her speech by talking about tattoos (I swear to gods it made sense in context), so I don't like. Know if that helped. At all. But it felt weirdly timely.

3. My flight out of New Orleans was delayed and a comedy of errors ensued. So, the original delay was only fifteen minutes and was apparently caused by mechanical failure, per the gate agents in New Orleans, and then the delay went to an hour, caused by weather, again per the gate agents in New Orleans. This left me with only twenty minutes between arrival in Dallas and my connecting flight to Seattle, which both I and the gate agent agreed was pretty undoable. So after some talking about options (because I had to catch the airporter to Ellensburg or be stuck in Seattle for the night, which put out getting on the next DFW-SEA flight), including spending the night in New Orleans and leaving the next morning, we agreed that I would get on the plane to Dallas, the airline would give me a hotel voucher, and I would get on a plane for Seattle the next morning.

You can see where this is going, right?

Upon arrival in DFW, the only Dallas agent authorized to make these decisions refused to give out any hotel vouchers to the twelve people who had been promised them, and then took about two hours dealing with various people (two groups of four, which were actually two couples each, and then another two girls around my age, and me -- the other singles gave up once it became clear vouchers were not forthcoming). It was...exhausting, especially because I wasn't entirely certain what was going on because they hadn't made a general announcement, just kept speaking very quietly. Because my gate-checked bag had been checked through to DFW rather than SEA I could have just picked it up and made arrangements myself, but I was still hoping to, I don't know, have something explained to me? Eventually the guy made it to me, and unlike the others I didn't want my already rebooked flight rebooked again, so he made the hotel reservations for me at a discounted rate, which was something, and it took about five minutes. And then I went to the hotel and ordered delivery (which took too long to get to me, ugh), and called Bellair to reschedule my reservation for the airporter to the next morning, and after that everything was smooth sailing except for the fact I only got four hours of sleep.

3a. Lessons learned: take the offer given to you in the city you're in if they can give it RIGHT THERE, don't count on the goodwill of someone who is not currently present.

3b. This shit happens so I'm not horrifically pissed off at American Airlines, the way some of the other people were; I got my flights rebooked without trouble and given that the really long delay was caused by weather I can see where they were coming from. It could have been worse, and I was fully prepared to spend the night in the airport if need be; it can't be worse than a convention hall and I've done that. I just wish that there had been more than one person dealing with the situation.

4. My mother went from New Orleans to Japan, so I came home to my father, who, having been left to his own devices for a week, somehow got coffee grounds ALL OVER THE KITCHEN, LITERALLY HOW. (Him: "It was easy." Me: "They're on the counter next to the cupboard where the coffee is, fine. And next to the coffee machine. But also on counters TOTALLY UNCONNECTED TO EITHER OF THOSE????")

4a. Within like three hours of coming home I became a cliche of "woman taking care of incompetent man," which may give some disservice to my father, but: I went grocery shopping, I made dinner, I cleaned the kitchen, I took out the trash; this morning I went grocery shopping AGAIN and I'm making dinner again.

5. We've got some weird-ass internet problem now that I have no idea what's up with: if my father turns on his desktop, every other device in the house, a.k.a. my laptop, my phone, and his phone (and my Kindle, which I need to take off airplane mode) loses the ability to connect with the wi-fi. This is unsustainable, but I have no idea how to fix it. I also have to reset the wi-fi by turning off the router (modem? I can't tell them apart?) after my dad turns his computer off. I've suggested that he unplug the ethernet cord from his computer and just use it on wi-fi and see if that makes it so I don't lose the internet, but so far he refuses to do so. I have no idea how to fix this. (And yes, I've tried turning the damn thing off and turning it on again, which does not work if my dad's computer is still on.)

5a. My dad thinks it's just the wind, which really like...doesn't seem like it should affect the internet this way.

5b. If this is still a problem tomorrow I'll call our provider, I guess.

Sisters of the Raven by Barbara Hambly, which is one of my favorite books and thus a good comfort reread, and I'm trying to reread Stray Souls by Kate Griffin, the first Magicals Anonymous book, but while I love the Matthew Switft books and I'm okay with the second MA book, Stray Souls is a little too real and tends to set off my ever-present despair about being twentysomething and not knowing what to do with life and life just being awful, and that's a little more real than I really like in my urban fantasy. Which is why I put it down the last couple of times I tried to reread it, too. I'm also rereading All Systems Red, the new Martha Wells novella, which is delightful.

I usually don't talk about comics on these, but because this is out of the ordinary for me, I'm also reading a bunch of Astonishing X-Men trades for the first time -- I normally tend to bounce off superhero comics, but I'm enjoying these. (My big fear with superhero (Marvel/DC) stuff is that I'm always paranoid that I'm reading the ones that are generally considered to be Not Good rather than the ones that are Good, because I'm not familiar with them and people have very strong opinions on what is and isn't good. Star Wars I know, superheroes I mostly don't.)

What I've just finished reading

Dog Wizard by Barbara Hambly, The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch, and Chalice by Robin McKinley, which are all rereads.

...which I am trying to get back to after a few months accidentally away.

What I've just finished reading

A couple of rereads, The Silicon Mage by Barbara Hambly and Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch, and Martha Wells' new novella, All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries, which is delightful.

What I'm currently reading

I seem to be going into another Barbara Hambly kick, which I do a couple of times a year, so I'm currently rereading Dog Wizard, which also happens to be the first Hambly book I ever read a few years ago.

What I'm reading next

I'd like to do another reread of S.M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time novels, which I haven't read in an age and are an old favorite, and then there are the new Star Wars books, Rebel Rising and Guardians of the Whills.

1. I've been in a godawful mood for the past couple weeks, ever since Celebration -- well, ever since before Celebration, really, and if I want to be honest about it I'd have to say since last year's Celebration, since that's when things began to spiral from "pretty okay" to "outright awful all the time." (Even if they weren't awful all the time, that's how most of the last year feels.) I'm slowly trying to get to the point where I can think about or look at anything relating to Celebration without feeling either really angry or really sad, which have been my two default emotions for a few years now, and I'm not there yet but I may eventually be. I did stumble across this recap by Eleven Thirty-Eight, and it's surprisingly gratifying and validating to find out that I'm not the only one whose primary emotion associated with SWCO is anger, because I've been struggling a lot with the fact that I didn't have the same fantastic experience a lot of people I know did.

2. Bring on Star Wars Celebration Mystery Location 2019, because I would like one Celebration where my memories are primarily positive rather than negative -- SWCE last year was really good, but everything that happened afterwards was a complete disaster, and my memory of the con itself is completely tied up with my ex.

3. One of the issues I had with SWCO this year was that I ended up feeling like I hadn't networked enough beforehand, which was completely baffling to me because normally ~networking isn't something I really associate with fandom. But I guess part of that was also that I've been relatively closed off for the past year because emotionally I've been such a mess, and I wasn't really open in public about the fact that I was going to SWCO at all because it was such a late decision. And, what's a major factor, is that my closest friends in the fandom weren't there. Star Wars is such an odd fandom, though, compared to a lot of my other fandom experiences -- you have your artists and your podcasters and cosplayers and your style bloggers and your regular bloggers, and your fan clubs, and the collectors and the 501st and the Mercs and the Rebel Legion, and as a fic writer a lot of the time I feel like I'm standing off to the side of the fandom. And I think that feeling of being a complete outsider right now is part of the reason that I'm starting to poke seriously at parts of the fandom that otherwise I'd be content to admire from outside.

4. I can't deny the fact that every time I think I'm all right with looking at someone else's write-up of Celebration there is, with completely no warning because they're always on blogs she used to tell me she hated, at least one picture of my ex. (Okay, not every time, but it's happened on several occasions.)

5. There was a really transcendent moment last year at SWCE that I never got this year at SWCO, which was actually the day before the con rather than at any point during it. I'd gone up from aella_irene's place to make sure I knew the trains I'd have to get on in order to reach the ExCel, and also to pick up my badges and scout out the general area. And I'd got all the way up there -- this was maybe half an hour to forty minutes in transit -- before I realized I didn't have the confirmation pages I'd printed out, but they would be in my e-mail. Fortunately there's a Starbucks right next to the ExCel, so I went in there and got a muffin and a chai and got on the wifi so I could get at my e-mail. So I was sitting in Starbucks for a while, and all the time there were people arriving -- a lot of people who came for the con were staying in hotels near the ExCel, while others were there for the same reason as me.

Star Wars is the kind of fandom you can wear on your sleeve -- literally, I mean, there's an amazing variety of Star Wars t-shirts out there -- and people came in with their Star Wars shirts and their Star Wars bags and their Star Wars suitcases and their Star Wars tattoos and their Rebel Legion and 501st patches and it was just...look, coming out of online fandom, and especially coming out of online fandom in a small town -- all that can be a very lonely thing. I never went to any cons in New Orleans; SWCO was my first ever. And being surrounded by that much love for Star Wars was...a lot. In a way that I hadn't expected and wasn't prepared for, and nearly brought me to tears.

I never got that moment at SWCO -- in fact, at SWCO I ended up feeling like I didn't love Star Wars enough to be there, and I felt like that every day. Just a completely different emotional experience. (For many reasons, no doubt, and I feel bad comparing SWCE and SWCO, but. Well.)

1. My mother has been telling everyone she knows -- which includes a bunch of university professors, since her restaurant is right across from the university -- that I'm going to Emory this fall, which keeps getting a reaction of "wow! that's such a good school! I can't believe someone who graduated from EHS got into a school that good!"

That's not as flattering as it sounds on the surface, not least of all because I graduated from high school nine years ago and getting into a PhD program has zip to do with graduating from high school, since I also have a BA and two MAs. (Which, admittedly, I would not have gotten without graduating from high school, but it's not like any PhD apps required my HS diploma or transcript.) Also, like -- I'm aware that even by American standards my high school was not great, and definitely not on par with those of a lot of people I went to college with, especially since I went to an expensive private university. And my degree is in classics, the most classist and elite of all academic fields. So it feels really weird to be getting complimented on essentially rising above my rural roots. Which are not even that rural: this is a university town. (I mean, the main industry in town besides the university is the hay industry, so it is also pretty damn rural, but.)

2. Post-SWCO (and I had this same thought prior to SWCE, because the Star Wars fandom is big on this, not to mention my ex is a professional costumier), I've determined I want to get into cosplay, which means I need to do things like learn to sew. I know enough to do basic repairs, but that's about it. I figure I should work on that before I move, since my mother has a sewing machine. Sewing, and then all the other stuff, because Star Wars being Star Wars is...a lot. Also because I'm still not over my ex I am this point determined to beat her at her own game even though I'm pretty sure she doesn't care about me anymore.

2a. As I result I've been digging through various Star Wars costuming forums, which are intense because the 501st and the Rebel Legion are pretty hard core, and the lightsaber construction and modification forums, which are even more off-putting because that's the most male-dominated corner of the SW fandom I've ever stumbled over.

2b. I really hope that by the next Celebration I'm not still fucked up over my ex, but it's TWO YEARS away so...hopefully not.

2c. Three separate people at SWCO, upon hearing I'm moving to Atlanta, told me that I need to go to Dragon Con. Which, hey, at least I know my ex won't be there.

3. I'm very excited about new Prison Break on the air, so I've been rewatching S1-4, which I originally saw back when I was in college -- I pretty vividly remember watching it back on Megavideo over my first Thanksgiving break, when I didn't go home and also didn't leave my dorm, because I was eighteen and freaked out by being a human being out in the world. I think I watched the bulk of it a few years later, on Netflix or Hulu -- I think Netflix -- when I was taking summer classes at CWU, using it as background noise while I studied. I'm not sure I ever finished S4.

3a. Twenty-two 45-minute episodes a season is excessive, and I think about this every time I watch normal-length shows. I'm used to 22-minute episodes and relatively concise storytelling; after Prison Break drags a subplot out over five 45-minute episodes I end up yelping, "Rebels or TCW could have covered this in seventeen minutes with time left over!" at my computer screen. (Admittedly they're different kinds of television storytelling, but they're not that different.)

3b. The least believable part of S1 and S2 is that America elected an unmarried female politician to vice president in the year 2000-whatever. I am very cynical in the present political climate.

4. Aside from the costuming forums, I've been on a teensy bit of a Star Wars break over the past week because I ended up a little Star Warsed out after Celebration. I think this happened with SWCE too, but after SWCE I was pretty much going insane since I was moving cross-country, and also...the incident with my ex that I had no idea how to process. So I had other things on my mind.

4a. I am going to take a break from the Prison Break rewatch as soon as I finish S2 and go back to Star Wars, but any time I take a break like that from SW I tend to get antsy.

5. I am going back to New Orleans next month for commencement, but I am starting to get antsy about the university maybe not like...knowing I am graduating. (I have already graduated, it's just the commencement ceremonies coming up.) But aside from the "order your cap and gown" e-mails I haven't gotten any info from the university, so I don't know if I'm supposed to do something or just wait. There aren't as many ceremonies for MA grads as for undergrads or the law school, med school, etc. So that's something I'm worried about right now.

1. I went to Star Wars Celebration Orlando last week, which was -- pretty much a wash in some ways; it wasn't as transcendent an experience as SWCE was last year, mostly because of the feeling of CONSTANT VIGILANCE I couldn't shake due to my extreme fear of running into my ex. Which sort of overrode every other feeling I had about the experience, except annoyance since SWCO also wasn't as organized as SWCE and I kept missing things. Florida Man Organizes Star Wars Convention.

Perhaps the real lesson from this con is "if you think there's a pretty good chance you're going to have a panic attack on the con floor, have at least one person there who knows why you're upset and afraid." Which I didn't this time; the person I was rooming with knew X and I weren't on speaking terms anymore, but not why.

2a. Which also makes me feel like I shouldn't talk about my feelings, since my ex told me last year that then I ruin everyone else's experiences too.

3. This was my first time in Florida, and man, is it like Louisiana in climate -- I have really, really missed humidity, because the dryness in Washington is bad for my skin and it's a lot easier to deal with my hair in humidity. I have also missed being warm. I'm back in Washington now and back in a wool sweater, and I really feel like I did not properly appreciate tank top weather while I was in Florida, due to the fact I was only there for the four days of Celebration, and not for an extra day or so on either side to do actual tourist stuff.

4. Hopefully tourist stuff next year, as I am trying to organize a girls' weekend with my college friends next year at Disney World.

4a. Apparently my college friends were having a girls' weekend that same weekend I was at SWCO, and while I wouldn't have been able to go, I'm fucked up over it because I had no idea and wasn't invited. So that didn't help my headspace over SWCO weekend.

5. I'm definitely in an "maybe I'm just completely broken and ruin everything" headspace right now.

Ten years after she vanished during an Imperial raid on a Twi'lek colony, Cham Syndulla sees his daughter Hera for the first time in a hologram -- now wearing the uniform of an Imperial agent and apparently working closely with a human Inquisitor. All Cham wants to do is to bring his long-missing child home to what remains of her family, but he soon finds that Hera Syndulla is only interested in two things: her duty to the Empire and her loyalty to her crew, a mismatched collection of outcasts brought together by Hera and her pet Inquisitor.

With Cham and the Rebel agent known as Fulcrum in pursuit, a new mission takes Hera and the crew of the Ghost to the planet Lothal, where a chance meeting with a Force-sensitive teenager awakens something long buried in the Inquisitor once known as Kanan Jarrus...and has dire consequences for Hera, their crew, the Empire, and the fledgling Rebel Alliance.

LJ -- at this point I'm not going to do anything except turn off the crosspost button; I've been mostly over here for the past eight years and agreeing to something legally binding in a language I don't read gets my hackles up, so my instinct is just to let it wither away. Also I'm too tired to do anything else right now.

...a day early, because I'm traveling tomorrow but don't want to get out of the habit of it.

What I'm currently reading

A reread of Martha Wells' The Cloud Roads, which is on the one hand comfort reading for me, because the series is one of my favorites, and on the other hand Wells' prose is similar enough to mine that it helps reset me when I'm feeling scattered, which I am at the moment.

What I've just finished reading

Star Wars (Legends): Knight Errant by John Jackson Miller -- a reread, but I think I've only read it once or twice before. JJM is one of my favorite Star Wars authors, but I don't like the Knight Errant book + comics as much as I like some of his other works. Kerra Holt is a little abrasive for me, though in a way that makes me second guess my feelings and go "is it the character herself or my expectations for what makes a female character likable?"

Also The Silent Tower by Barbara Hambly, which I've been rereading on and off for a while but finally buckled down to finish the other day.

What I'm reading next

I'm in my usual pre-travel "oh god I need to get ALL the books I will read ALL the books" even though I know that I will not, in fact, read all the books. I pulled out Star Wars: Wraith Squadron to put in my handbag as hardcopy reading, and I've got my Kindle as well. We'll see.

1. I've been in a weird, grumpy mood lately -- I'm traveling this week so I'm stressed out about that (I hate traveling), I had my period, it's end of season stress, it's March, I've had a weird on-and-off writing....year, really, last year was a nightmare and I'm not over it yet. Trying to decide about SWCO. Trying to decide about grad schools. Not focusing well on whatever books I'm reading. My dad being back. I'm not really talking to anyone online; I'm not talking to anyone other than my parents in RL. I don't leave the house except to go to Fred Meyer. I don't exercise. The weather is...getting better, but it's that end of winter/beginning of spring slush.

2. I'm going to Atlanta on Wednesday to visit Emory, which I've got mixed feelings about -- I mean, god, I need to get out of this town, I need to interact with actual human beings who aren't my parents, but I don't like traveling (it's a full day in transit either way), I've never been to Atlanta before, and it's going to be several days of interacting with complete strangers who I need to impress. Well, I don't know how much I actually need to impress them, since they already made me the offer, but I don't want to be a complete disaster up front, you know? (They can't...take away the offer, can they? I assume I would have to fuck up real bad to accomplish that and I'm not sure there's anything I can do that's that bad unless I like. Trip and murder a professor.)

2a. I hate traveling and will start freaking out about the most minute details literally months in advance, which means I get crazier and crazier as the day approaches. (Also, checking weather reports, it's not actually, like, warm in Atlanta this week? It's basically the same as Ellensburg, looks like.)

3. I was going to visit the University of Kentucky, but there's like...a very slim chance I'm going to say yes to Kentucky, because the Emory offer is just so much better and the program is basically tailor-made for me. So I told them I couldn't visit, but now I feel bad about it. (But hey, that means I'm not going to be in transit again in March -- oh, I need to tell my friend in Lexington I'm not going and won't be staying with her.)

3a. I guess if Emory rescinds the offer for accidentally tripping and murdering a professor I can always go to Kentucky.

4. I am trying to sort out my feelings about SWCO because I told S (who I'd be rooming with) I'd get back to her by Monday. It's really, really hard for me to separate my feelings about SWCO from my feelings about X, and I'm not sure I can; if I go I'll be nervous about her the entire time, if I don't go I'll be angry at her for taking that from me for the next two years. The only two things that are making me hesitate are the money (which I have) and X (will have to avoid all Hera cosplayers just in case it's her).

4a. My mother thinks that I shouldn't go because it's expensive (true) and she thinks it's childish, but she thinks everything I do except the grad school thing is childish so there's that.

4b. The most recent family drama is that my cousin A, her (semi-estranged? no one seems to be sure?) husband, her two tiny children showed up unannounced at the family home in Japan last week and will be staying for the next month, so like, between A doing that and my father, Mr. "I found some cheap tickets so I'm going to Thailand and Laos for the next four months, I'm leaving the day after tomorrow, can you book the airport shuttle for me?" (true story), I don't really think my travel choices are the ones in this family that ought to be criticized.

5. I am at this point pretty determined to do the runDisney Star Wars Half-Marathon next year -- well, the 10K -- to the extent that I told all my college friends about it in the hopes of scheduling a girls' weekend at Disney World next April. (The Dark Side one -- the Light Side one at Disneyland is my birthday weekend, which, I don't want to do that on my birthday, and I feel like January will be harder to schedule around anyway. Though they haven't announced the dates for next year yet, probably because this year's hasn't happened yet.) Signs are looking positive on the friends' front, anyway, and Alaska said that she's also interested in running the 10K. Chicago said very firmly that she will not be running but she's up for the Disney vacation part.

5a. I have not run since high school ten years ago, but it's more than a year off so that's plenty of time to get in shape, right? And their minimum mile time is sixteen minutes and that's still over my walking time for a mile, so that should be...fine...anyway I have already planned my running costume.

5b. I am also trying to work on my massive commitment issues (the whole debacle with SWCO has not helped), so planning something with multiple people a year in advance should...help...?

Wait, I might be able to go to SWCO after all, which means I have to decide whether to go or not.

I really want to go, but it's a lot of money, and I know my ex is going to be there. However -- I don't want to give my ex the satisfaction of knowing that she got to go and I didn't, which isn't really, like...logical? The problem is that while I do really want to go because STAR WARS a lot of it is tied up with my ex -- which my memories of SWCE are too, and I want to separate "Celebration" from "X." So it's really hard for me to untangle "I want to do this for its own sake" and "I have issues with my ex."

(I do have the money. It is not, perhaps, the best use of my money, but my grandmother gave me a lot of money for graduating + getting into graduate school, and even before then I was planning to go, you know, I bought these tickets last July.

Admittedly: I am going to Atlanta this week (the university is paying) and then I have to go to New Orleans in May, and then I have to move cross-country in July or August. And I'm not making any money at the moment, but I am going to be making money once school starts in August, since I'll be TAing. And I'm trying to plan to go to Orlando next April with friends, but that's a year off.)

Things that are really not going to help my commitment issues: the fact that I have my 4-day pass for SWCO in my hand and I'm not going.

I had two separate plans fall through -- the first one was because I was planning to go with my ex, the second I'm assuming fell through because I haven't heard anything from her in about two months. And -- I know my ex is going to be there and I am literally terrified of running into her, so going probably wouldn't be a good idea anyway. They livestream the panels and most of the merch will be on Ebay the next week any day, and even at a markup will be cheaper than the thousand bucks it would cost to get a plane ticket and a hotel room (if there are still hotel rooms available).

I am still going to be furious and sulking for the next month, because I really do want to go. (Especially since there's not going to be a Celebration in 2018.)

As an aside: I'm traveling next Wednesday (I'm going to Atlanta to visit a potential grad school), so there may or may not be one of these next week.

What I'm currently reading

Shadows by Robin McKinley, which I read once when it first came out but haven't reread since -- I'm a little uncomfortable with how she incorporated the Japanese stuff, but I think this is more of my own issues than what's actually on the page. (Except I guess that while she made up several Eastern European countries, Japan's just...Japan. But England gets namechecked too, so...I don't know, like I said, it's my issues and I don't see too clearly where those are concerned. Also, Takahiro has the same name as my cousin Takahiro, so that's a little disconcerting for me.)

That's in hardback, in ebook I'm kind of flipping through various books without really feeling compelled to commit to any of them, which is mildly irritating to me since I'd like to focus on something for more than half a page -- The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells and Star Wars: Knight Errant by John Jackson Miller (both rereads) are the two current culprits.

What I've just finished reading

Rereads of A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India by William Dalrymple, and Emilie and the Hollow World by Martha Wells were all rereads I finished this week, along with Magic for Nothing, the new Seanan McGuire Incryptid novel, which came out on Tuesday and which I read pretty much immediately.

What I'm reading next

Gods, at this point it's a wild guess, since I almost never read whatever I said I was going to read next the week before unless I'm in the midst of a series reread, and even then...

I'm going to do another graphic of daily reads for February, but not tonight.

What I'm currently reading

Rereads of A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin, the first Matthew Swift book, and White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India by William Dalrymple, which I read a few years ago before I finalized my academic subfield (Roman imperialism and cultural identity), so it's really interesting to read something that's the same general topic but at a two thousand year remove. (And of course a lot of the academic talk is the same; both my field and Dalrymple's studies come out of the paradigm shift in post-colonial academia.)

I've also got Barbara Hambly's The Silent Tower on a slow reread, but I'm not really in the mood for it so I keep putting it down.

What I've just finished reading

The Minority Council and The Glass God by Kate Griffin -- I did my Matthew Swift + Magicals Anonymous out of order, whoops. (I tend to do series rereads out of order for various reasons.) And, huh, looking at my spreadsheet that actually seems to be it. Weird, I thought I read more this week.

What I'm reading next

I've got a bunch of William Dalrymple books either checked out from the library (In Xanadu and Nine Lives) or that I've just bought (Return of a King and The Last Mughal), so there's a high chance it's going to be Dalrymple for non-fiction. I also want to try and read (or reread) more Star Wars this month than I did last month. (Still haven't done that A New Dawn reread I've been wanting to do for ages.)

My dad came back, drank all the wine in the house on the grounds of "there wasn't much left, so I drank it," to be met with my mom going, "that's because we use it for cooking!" and me going, "IT WAS MINE!" (The red my mom bought, but the chardonnay and the pink moscato were both mine.) So I went to Fred Meyer in a rage this morning to get another bottle of chardonnay, since I use it for making risotto at 11 at night because that's when I get hungry, and now I've got a bottle of wine in my closet along with my remaining half-bottle of election night rum. (Which I hid before my dad got back, since I knew he'd drink it otherwise; before he left he drank the other bottle of rum, which my mom bought for making some kind of fruit in rum, my mother's cooking sake, and the plum vodka my mother made that wasn't even done yet.) I am not happy about having alcohol stocked away in my bedroom closet, but at least I know my dad won't look for it there.

I am kind of astonished he drank the moscato, because the last time I bought a bottle (it's what I drink), he wrote it off as "too girly" due to being pink and sweet. So I thought at least the moscato would be safe, but NOPE.

Oh, another reason I'm in a bad mood -- yesterday I found a book I'd been looking for for months at a price under three figures and happily clicked "buy," only to get the order cancelled half an hour later because apparently I'd gotten the last copy and the cover was ripped. I'M SO ANNOYED! (Star Wars: Lords of the Sith is out of print in hardback, and nearly impossible to find -- I'm furious with myself that I didn't get it in hardback when it first came out, just ebook.)

The Minority Council by Kate Griffin and The Silent Tower by Barbara Hambly, both rereads, though I've only read The Silent Tower once. (I've read others of the Windrose books multiple times, but the first one, only once -- this is another series I originally read in a weird order for some reason.) I also started Star Wars: Knight Errant by John Jackson Miller yesterday (another reread), but was still in a Matthew Swift headspace so I went to The Minority Council instead.

What I've just finished reading

I finished up the Sun Wolf and Starhawk series with The Witches of Wenshar and The Dark Hand of Magic (Barbara Hambly), and then went through the middle two Matthew Swift books, The Midnight Mayor and The Neon Court (Kate Griffin). I also finished reading Star Wars: Catalyst by James Luceno, which I hadn't expected to like or finish and which surprised me by the fact that I actually did like it. I bounce off so many Star Wars novels (a good 90% of the time they're the weakest part of the canon) that it's always a shock when I actually like one.

What I'm reading next

I really want to do a Star Wars: A New Dawn reread -- I've been meaning to since last year, and just haven't gotten around to it because for some reason I keep thinking I have to finish all my other books in progress first.

1. I've gotten offers from not one, but TWO graduate schools (Emory University and the University of Kentucky), which means that I'm going to have to face my nemesis, making decisions. I didn't actually expect to get into multiple schools. I'm still waiting to hear from two others, though I had to present myself as more interested in the Late Antique period for them and my entire record is classical, so those two are longer shots on that point alone. And Emory was my first choice (aside from Tulane, which said no), so...

1a. I have to tell them by Monday whether or not I'm going to the department's admitted students weekend and I am freaking out, because I know I should go, but the idea is terrifying. Not least because I can't interpret the instructions on the freaking e-mail about booking flights.

1b. I hate traveling so much that my kneejerk response is NO I DON'T WANT TO, but I guess I...should. But I don't want to and I'm dreading it. Alternately I just tell them no, I'm busy that weekend. Or something. (There's a 99% chance I'm going to say yes, so I don't need to be wooed.)

2. My father was supposed to come back from Thailand two weeks ago, but he got the date of his return flight wrong and missed it, so he's coming back this Wednesday instead. My mother keeps going "I don't understand how anyone could get that wrong," and I have to keep telling her, "I've done that with deadlines and exam dates," because I...take after my father in a lot of ways, apparently including in our crappy memories.

3. The weather's gone up above freezing here, which on the one hand is great, but on the other hand everything is melting...including the snow piled up on the woodshed roof, which we've now discovered is leaking heavily. You know what's in the woodshed? OUR FIREWOOD.

3a. My mother and I are basically like "well, we'll let Dad deal with it when he comes back" at this point, but I'm not sure there's anything that can be done before spring. I'm pretty certain we're going to have to get the roof replaced, so at least we already know what this year's home improvement project is going to be. (Last year we redid the deck. A few years ago my father decided to dig an impromptu sewage ditch. Living in the country is fucking weird.)

4. I am pretty good baker -- I've done biscuits, cookies, scones, layer cakes, eclairs and cream puffs, bread, cinnamon rolls, pies, crisps, and crumbles -- but the one thing I've never been able to make successfully has been chocolate chip cookies. I've tried so many times, every recipe you can think of -- yes, even that one. yes, that one too. yes, I've tried Alton Brown -- but I've never been able to do them successfully UNTIL NOW. I FINALLY MASTERED THE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE. (I know, right, who can't make chocolate chip cookies? Everyone can make chocolate chip cookies.) I made perfect, delightful chewy in the center and crispy on the edges chocolate chip cookies, and I'm genuinely stunned because I've fucked it up so many times, AND YET. PRAISE THE TOLL HOUSE GODS. (The only thing I changed was using half milk chocolate and half semi-sweet chocolate chips, but that's only because I had both.)

4a. I still haven't made king cake this year. QUICK, MARDI GRAS SEASON IS COMING TO AN END, THERE'S NOT MUCH TIME LEFT.

5. So -- I don't think I've mentioned this on DW, but I started knitting again in December. For those that don't remember, or weren't around, I stopped knitting in February 2013 when I got tendinitis in both wrists, and I was too afraid of injuring myself again to pick it up again at any point in the intervening four years. When I stopped I still had stuff on the needles (a 3x1 ribbed sock, a lace stole, a cabled cowl), and I just packed it up when I moved from England back to Washington. At some point in December I pulled out my half-finished sock and started doing a round or two in the ten minutes between finishing doing my hair and finishing an episode of Rebels or TCW (everything in my life gets timed by those 22-minute eps; the 44-minute ones can really throw me off). And then I started working on it more, and finished that sock -- and cast on for a second sock (which involved me trying to figure out which cast-on I'd used, since I didn't have notes or anything, and which heel I'd used), and finished it a few days ago -- my first finished knitting in four years. I'm still sort of wary of the stole and the cowl (for one, I either put aside or threw out the patterns when I was decluttering this summer, and have no idea where they are, though I do know which patterns they are -- the stole is Juno Regina and the cowl is Nennir), but I pulled out my untouched stash, wound up a skein of Tanis Fiber Arts pebble sock, and cast on for another pair of socks.

5a. I'm still incredibly paranoid that I'll re-injure my wrists; I'm probably more afraid of that than I am of anything else, and I'm afraid of everything. Mostly I'm afraid of it when it comes to typing, but I can't stop typing, so...we persevere. (I wear wrist braces when I type and when I sleep, but I think they actually make my wrists worse if I wear them while knitting.)

The Witches of Wenshar, the second Sun Wolf and Starhawk book, by Barbara Hambly. I'm sort of inching through James Luceno's Star Wars: Catalyst -- I suspect it's going to be another DNF, as Luceno's one of my least favorite SW writers and I have a low tolerance for ~genius men and the women who take care of them, which is pretty much what the beginning of the book reads as. (And from what I've heard, I don't think that's going to improve; I don't particularly care about Galen Erso and Orson Krennic's relationship, either.)

What I've just finished reading

I'm going through books a little more slowly in February than I did in January, which has its highs and lows. I finished rereading The Siren Depths, and went through The Ladies of Mandrigyn (the first Sun Wolf and Starhawk book) and The Midnight Mayor (the second Matthew Swift) book, all of which were rereads.

I also moved The Fifth Season to my Did Not Finish list, and got through one chapter of The House of the Four Winds this morning before it went to the DNF list too. Blah. I suspected it would hit the DNF list as soon as it said as an aside "oh, yeah, these seventeen countries all share one ambassador for convenience." That's not...how international politics...works... (Sort of an alternate fantasy Earth, which I tend to find dull when they're just making up fancy names for England and France so that they can slot in their tee-tiny fictional country but not have to think about it too hard. Like, either do something interesting with it and do it fast, or go full fantasy, dude.) Also, the MC was...painfully boring.

What I'm reading next

I keep meaning to reread the Rivers of London books so I can read The Hanging Tree, since I can't remember what happened, but...I like the Matthew Swift books better which is why I reread The Midnight Mayor instead WHOOPS.

I've been meaning to reread the Enduring Flame trilogy as well, but we'll see. In all likelihood...more Barbara Hambly.